Introduction
Heyo, Recently I've been working on mostly improving the Empire System and it's progressing quite nicely as well as playing some Thief: The Dark Project (Yes, the 1998 Game) to draw inspiration for the Stealth system.
I've come up with a lot of good ideas as well as gotten suggestions for the Stealth system from you guys that has really helped to shape up a pretty good design for it and even new Stealth-based Quests such as Kidnapping/Retrieve Quests (Cheers to dark_matter_mobius) and also new types of quests such as stealing Research books from other Empires.
ActionBar Split
So the major change to the Action-Bar part of the GUI is the split. Basically this will allow Players to have 2 different items selected and be used at the same time.
Benefits
The benefits that this change enables are immense, this means Dual Wielding, using Spells and Weapons at the same time without quickly having to change which items are selected, having both Spells and Elixirs selected at the same time etc.
Bow Example
To give you an example by using a Bow and having several different Arrows. In most games you usually have a kind of quiver or specific inventory slots for the use of Arrows.
Instead of using this traditional method which I feel is quite stale and makes it harder to switch Arrows in mid-battle because you usually have to open your inventory and switch the Arrows about.
By using this split method all you need to do is change which Arrows is selected in order to switch to which kind of Arrow you want to use which makes it easier to use an incapacitate arrow, switch over to an explosive one, shoot the at enemy and watch it explode in its face.
Dual Wield Example
As I mentioned earlier this system allows for dual wielding so you could basically have a Sword and a Shield equipped and perhaps mid-battle you want to switch the shield for a sword and go barbarian on the enemy, Hacking'n'Slashing the enemy into bits.
This system will allow for such a thing very easily, just the push of a button to be exact.
Alpha News
In other news, because I was very ill last week and couldn't get any work done this sadly means I will have to post-pone the release date for the Alpha a wee bit. Roughly a week to get enough content in there for a decent 0.1 release.
I've also tried to contact Desura because of the Alphafunding service they offer. I feel that the platform is very good for several reasons and will be beneficial for you guys as well as me. But sadly so far they haven't gotten back to me yet.
Conclusion
At first this GUI change might not seem like a big deal but hopefully this article has answered why this change is quite a large and important one and also allows for a lot of neat new stuff.
After all, who hasn't wanted to slash an enemy with a sword whilst throwing an Elixir of Poison into their face and casting a Fireball spell as well as blocking another enemy's attack with a shield.
P.S
The next update will be quite large and mostly about the Empire System, there are some really quite sweet stuff that I will be talking about, Researches, Research Books, Basic Quests, Self-Populating Villages and if I have time enough I will start working on implementing the Player-owned Empire stuff.
Stay tuned!
Neat Feature. MOAR updates please :)
Cheers, a new update will be arriving later today ;)